


Picturesque

by Im_only_mildly_ashamed



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Delusions, Hallucinations, I am, Just the full shmorgasbord, M/M, MOTHERFUCK, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self Harm, Something that smells suspiciously like incest, Suicide, The L boi will actually show up one day, also, it'l just take a while, sincerely sorry this is as long as it will be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2018-12-16 02:26:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11819289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Im_only_mildly_ashamed/pseuds/Im_only_mildly_ashamed
Summary: The war is over, Gon has come home.His mother makes a point to educate him, eventually, reaching the arts.Gon learns to paint.Then snaps in two.(I'll do my darndest to make it seem both in character and psychologically savvy but im no medical professional. Sorry)





	1. Chapter 1

Gon’s muscles don’t quite work the way they did before.

He’s still quite strong for his age.

But something is… off.

Sometimes they lock up.

Sometimes they move on their own.

Mito insists it will improve.

“Just give it time”

She says.

Gon doesn’t believe her.

He politely nods.


	2. Chapter 2

Killua will send him something every now and again.

A rare sea shell, Ice that never melts, pocketed wonders like that.

Sometimes they even talk.

       “You saw the northern lights?”

       Killua humms.

       “Yeah, they were pretty amazing. I wish I could show them to you.”

       Gon doesn’t say anything at that.

Sometimes, Killua forgets things aren’t the way they were.

On Killua’s end of the world, he has long, wild adventures that he gets to tell Gon about when it’s over.

On Gon’s end of the world, there is silence.

Then ‘hello’

Then ‘how was your day’

Then tales of grand adventures he’ll never have again.

Then silence again.


	3. Chapter 3

Mito believed her adoptive son needed to be educated like everyone else, arts included.

He learns to paint.

That’s where the first real problem arises.

He seemed to enjoy learning, so she gave him a canvas and a mess of paints and let him loose while she made supper.

Half an hour later, she heard screaming.

She sprinted up the stairs while her grandmother tried to stand.

“Gon?”

She saw her child cradled into a corner with his hands on his head.

His hands were drenched to the wrist in mixed black paint.

Staring at her from the easel was a face carved with scars.

One eye bulged out and the other shrunk in between swollen eyelids.

Blood matted the white tangled mess of hair hanging in clumps in front of the face.

That face made Mito want to vomit.


	4. Chapter 4

Gon was motionless as his aunt and great grandmother scrubbed the paint from his hands.

His eyes seemed empty, like he was a convincing mannequin that could be knocked over by a warm breeze.

_‘Like he wasn’t alive anymore.’_

Mito shook herself.

The boy was clearly alive.

He breathed, he drank the water they offered, and he blinked.

Occasionally.

_‘But what if his mind is dead?’_ Asked a little voice in her head.

She dismissed this thought as preposterous.

She had no reason to.

After scrubbing the toxic stains from the boy, she and her grandmother decided leaving the boy alone for a little was for the best.

He was sitting on the the edge of the tub with his hands on his knees, looking directly forward.

An hour passed.

Two hours.

The light stayed on.

No footfalls could be heard.

The only sound was the wind on the trees and the gentle knitting of an elderly woman.

It was a lovely day outside


	5. Chapter 5

Three hours passed in an uncomfortable silence.

Gon was standing in the hallway.

Mito had no idea for how long, as she just looked over to see the boy standing rigid and staring at her.

“I have to… it…. I have to.”

He said vaguely.

Mito shivered.

Her son had talked in countless ways at countless volumes, but never so quietly, and never so expressionlessly.

The boy marched up stairs, his arms swaying as he stepped.

She heard a door open.

And close.

His conversation was muffled through the ceiling.

“Killua? Hey.”

A pause

“No it’s not too late, what’s up?”

Mito assumed from that response that Killua had called Gon.

She was amazed Gon could hear his phone vibrating from across the house.

“Really? That’s amazing!”

A tiny measure of inflection had crept into his voice, but he didn’t anywhere close to himself.

Or anywhere close to human.

“Hmmm? What do you mean?”

There was a pause.

“What do you mean by weird?”


	6. Chapter 6

A week later Killua knocked on the front door.

Mito opened, surprised, but ready to welcome.

“Hello Ms. Freecs.”

She smiled.

“Killua! It’s good to see you again.”

A scream came from the upper floors, followed by the shattering of glass.

They stood in silence before Mito stepped aside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why I'm even uploading this.  
> It will be met largely with silence, and what validation I do receive is numb to me.  
> Why am I doing this again?


	7. Chapter 7

When Killua pushed open the door of Gon’s, he was greeted by a wave of stenches.

The stench of paint tightly packed into a room.

The stench of an artist not as washed as he should’ve been.

But neither of these push him as close to vomiting as the figure hunched over in the far corner.

He was shaking, curled into his knees with his arms limp at his sides.

His forearms were blackened.

Not from being burned to charcoal (as they had before), but from being drenched in paint.

Killua thought how this might be worse.

“Gon?” He said carefully, adding neither concern nor judgement to his voice.

Gon raised his head and turned.

His eyes widened.

“Gon.” Killua said again.

Gon stood and crouched slightly, he looked trapped the corner of his room.

“Gon, are you ok?” Killua asked, tone buckling under his fear.

Killua made the mistake of approaching.

Gon leaped from the building.

When had he gotten so fast?

“Gon!”

Killua screaming from the window did not make him reappear.


	8. Chapter 8

Mito heard the his scream so, again, she ran upstairs.

“Killua are you alrigh-”

She pushed open the door to see Killua looking out the window.

“Oh.”

She said.

“He didn’t look like Gon. His eyes they were... “

Killua turned on his heel to face Mito.

He smudged the tears from his eyes and sniffed.

“He looked like a wild animal.”


	9. Chapter 9

A mile away, Gon was desperately scrubbing.

His hands.

His hands, they weren’t…

They weren’t…

Clean.

They were smudged and flithy and black and red and blue and if he could just get them clean he could-

Was that really Killua he saw?

There’s no way.

Killua is with his sister.

And they are both very far away.

And not close.

And so, so,  _ so _ far away.

…

…

…

But…

But maybe it was him.

It was impossible, totally impossible.

But maybe…

Agh!

NO! It doesn’t matter!

There’s more painting to be done.

MORE painting.

He had to get it down he had to-

It was the only way.

If he could just… Get it _ out _ of him.

And Gon wasn’t very good with words so if he just…

He could paint…

And talking wasn’t really an option anyway, because Killua never talked about it, and Gon said some really horrible things to him that he didn’t mean but it doesn’t matter because he said them and he hurt Killua and things aren’t…  _ right _ . Even after he said sorry.

So if he could just…  **get** it out he could…  _ Make  _ them right.


	10. Chapter 10

Killua poured over each and every one of Gon’s paintings.

There were dozens.

Ones of Kite, disfigured and beaten.

Others Gon painted of himself, always with bloodied hands.

Still more with Pitou, exaggerated and horrific.

The paintings that made him most uncomfortable were the ones of him.

Always surreal exaggerations.

There was one where Killua tiny, doubled over and weeping, pressed under Gon’s foot as he walked toward the horizon.

Another where Killua’s eyes were just a tear filled maelstrom, seen over Gon’s shoulder.

They all seemed like twisted parallels to the truth.


	11. Chapter 11

“Killua”

He turned towards the door at his name.

“Come downstairs, eat.”

He looked back down at the painting in his hands and shook his head.

“I’m not hungry.”

The room filled with more light as the door widened.

Mito stood in the doorframe and put her hands onto her hips.

“I am not asking you young man.”

Killua turned back to the doorway.

She was serious.

She was ordering a man who’d killed roughly equal to the population of whale island to eat his supper.

Killua cracked a smile.

“Absolutely Ms. Freecs, I’ll be down shortly.”

She nodded stiffly and walked back downstairs.

Killua looked into Kite’s scarred face for a moment longer before dropping Gon’s painting and walking downstairs.


	12. Chapter 12

Gon had rubbed everything but the calluses off of his hands.

It was time to accept they were as clean as they would get.

It was time to paint again.


	13. Chapter 13

Mito and Abe were lovely company.

They asked politely but non-intrusively about his many adventures, and when he seem to shirk away they shifted the discussion to new port additions.

Apparently the new sailors had caused a bit of stir with their lackluster social and hygienic skills.

One had tried to insultingly flirt with Mito.

He received a slap that knocked him unconscious.

Killua giggled shamelessly at this story.

Another aspect to their lovable company was the truly amazing variety and skill of their cooking.

Mito was able to turn fish of mildly different texture and taste into dozens of delicious meals.

(Killua quickly found that he couldn't just say “pass the salmon” as that included three separate dishes with wildly different tastes)

As most of the serving plates were emptied and washed, in came the question hanging just on the edge of the cheery conversation.

The weighted dangerous question.

“So, Killua how long are you planning staying?”

Killua nearly forgot his place and bit through the fork in his mouth.

“Um… I actually don’t know. Gon is…”

Worse than I thought.

“But I can’t be here for too long. I can’t just abandon my sister.”

but I dropped everything and ran here. Like an idiot.

Mito nodded.

“Speaking of, how is sister dealing with this?”

Killua smiled.

“I believe her exact words were ‘don’t you show your goddamn face here until you are 100% certain Gon is ok.’. Or at least, something like that”

Mito seemed taken back.

But she chuckled.

“She seems to have grown into quite the character.”

Killua chuckled too.

“Yeah, she has.”

Killua face suddenly soured.

“Besides, she’s probably taking this opportunity to chase after boys.”

He stated the last word of his sentence like he’d like it out of his mouth as quickly as possible please and thank you.

Even Abe giggled knowingly at Killua’s disgust.

“Well, it’s not like you’ve room to talk eh?”

Asked the great grandmother.

Killua blushed slightly and nodded slowly.

Abe, ever hospitable, tried to correct her mistake.

“Oh, I am very sorry, I didn’t mean t-”

There was a knock at the door.


	14. Chapter 14

Rapping his knuckles on the door had stung a little.

His fingers were still raw.


	15. Chapter 15

Mito insisted KIllua sit.

Caught up in the moments revelry, she forgot things were not the way were.

Gon’s bloodied hands reminded her.


	16. Chapter 16

Mito screamed at him.

Why?

Had really become a monster?

Gon furrowed his brow.

That wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

His hands itched but hurt to scratch them.

Maybe she’ll stop worrying if he just acted normal.

“Aunt Mito?”


	17. Chapter 17

Killua had stood up as soon as he heard her shout.

He ran to see…

Gon.

His forearms to his fingertips were…

It looked like he’s scratched off the skin with his fingernails.

When Gon looked to him, his face looked like he’d just seen the most horrifying thing.

Then his expression was gone, and he was facing Mito.


	18. Chapter 18

“Gon… Your hands!”

Gon looked at his palms.

He flipped them over.

They were like they had been.

He looked back up to his adoptive mother and cocked his head to the side.


	19. Chapter 19

Gon’s mother took his hands lovingly in hers and wrapped carefully.

The bandage wrapped around each finger, and down onto his hand.

And down on to his wrist.

And up his forearm.

And was tied off there.

Then the other hand.

Around each finger.

(Gon started shifting his feet)

Down onto his hand.

(Gon started to ants more seriously)

Onto his wrist.

(Gon antsing started to interfere with Mito’s work)

“Gon, stop that.”

He wined.

“Sorry aunt Mito, I just really want to paint!”   
Mito stopped wrapping his arm.

“Are you sure that’s what you should be doing?”

Gon stopped hopping from one foot to the other.

“Yes.”

“You might not be able to move your hands right.”

Gon paused.

“Then I’ll take off the bandages.”

Mito shook her head without looking up.

“No.”

“I’ll only do it on my right hand.”

She shook her head again.

“No.”

“Mito please!”

Gon’s mother looked up from his arm.

She was crying.

She didn’t say anything.

She just bit her lip and shook her her head.

Gon’s response died in his throat.

He closed his mouth and opened it.

He finally spoke.

“I can wait.”

Mito again nodded, not trusting herself to speak.


	20. Chapter 20

Killua shuffled nervously outside the bathroom.

He could hear muffled conversation, but didn’t feel the need to pluck out what they were saying.

It seemed private.

The door swung open and Gon paused in the frame.

He looked at Killua for a moment before turning and walking up the stairs.

“What the hell Gon?”

Killua hadn’t meant to sound so harsh.

It may have been beyond his control.

Gon paused for the briefest of moments, but he climbed the stairs and slammed the door behind him.

Killua growled and stomped up the stairs after him.

Killua threw open door.

Gon was sitting on the floor of his room, craning his neck to look up at the blank canvas.

“Gon.”

Gon half turned to him before he stopped.

He groaned.

“Gon.”

He groaned louder

“Gon!”At Killua’s shout, Gon leaped up from the ground and onto the bed, wrapping his head in his pillow.

“What the hell Gon, you can’t just ignore me!”

Gon grumbled more and curled into a ball.

Killua’s frazzled patience and nerves did not play will with the silent treatment.

He seized Gon by the chest and flung him across the room.

Gon impacted the wall with a painful thump and slammed the floor with much the same grace.

The teen cradled his skull as as he stood back up.

“OW! Damn it Killua! You can’t do that!”

Killua seized Gon by his nose, wrapping two knuckles around it and tugging.

“Like hell I can’t!”

“Ow! Ow! Killua, please! I’m not supposed to talk to you!”

Killua relaxed his fingers involuntarily.

“What?”

His lips were numbly speaking for him.

Gon swallowed.

“You’re not supposed to talk to hallucinations.”


	21. Chapter 21

Killua walked back downstairs.

Mito was quietly crying in the kitchen.

She probably didn’t register he was there until his chair creaked along the tile as he pulled out the chair across from her.

She sniffed and wiped her face.

“Hey” she said. “How is he doing?”

Killua swallowed and sat down.

“He thinks I’m not real.”


	22. Chapter 22

Walking through hell was like walking through a forest.

You always came back with little bits of it attached to you.

Burrs, grass stains, small cuts and scrapes, things like that.

So Gon was cleaning himself.

He just needed to pick the little bits of hell stuck to him off.

All needed to do was take out the memories of fighting, and Kite, and himself, and blood, and guts, and the little bits that connect muscle and bone that kept flying out of Pitou when he kept  **FUCKING-**

Those bits.

He needed to get those bits off.

Except it wasn’t as easy as picking through his shorts or taking a hot shower or giving his clothes to Killua who really knew better than him on how to do this kind of thing. “Really, you’re useless” he’d told him but something told Gon that Killlua liked helping, like the fact that he never complained as much about stuff he really didn’t like. But there were also the things Killua never complained about, those could be really bad like when he and Gon were under that tree over by the river that almost went across the whole island and anyway they were under there and Gon leaned in to ki-

And the best way he could come up with to get those bit off was to create them out, he wanted to the bits of blood and organs that were part of him now and just sort of smear them on something else, like a canvas.

But he couldn’t.

So he flexed his bandaged, bloody fingers uselessly over the blank canvas.

“Killua” was staring at him from the far wall.

He was sitting on Gon’s bed and texting

“Alluka says hi” he said, not looking up.

He knows it shouldn’t, but it bothers him that “Killua” was here.

He feels the urge to get the mess away.

The one both littered across the room and the one crammed into his brain.

Perhaps three or four seconds later, Gon’s phone buzzed.

It was Alluka.

“Hi! Brother wanted me to check in on you. Everything Ok? ヽ(〃･ω･)ﾉ”.


	23. Chapter 23

Killua stared from across the room at Gon.

He’d picked up his phone, then froze.

A heartbeat later, Gon pitched the phone full force against the far wall.

A few inches from Killua’s head.

It exploded.

Gon started to uncoil the bandages wrapped over and around his right hand.

He picked up a stained brush but his fingers leaped back off it.

The brush clattered onto the floor.

His hand was freely bleeding now, the occasional droplet of red weighing enough to splatter onto the floor or the paintbrush.

He waited a long moment before wrapping his hands again.


	24. Chapter 24

Leorio was sitting in his office, the room half lit.

He just gotten back from a flight to one of the most destitute areas on the globe.

He was tired and he suspected he was sick.

So he did the closest thing to rest he didn’t feel guilty about: skimming through Brown’s Book of Anatomy and scrawling note in the margins.

His phone buzzed against his desk.

He picked it up and flipped it over.

Killua was calling.

Leorio frowned.

Killua never called.

However, when Leorio put the phone to his ear he couldn’t stifle his smile.

It felt nice to be called.

“Yo, what’s up?”


	25. Chapter 25

Leorio had more questions than answers.

However, the one thing he was adamant about was getting Gon to where he could get  help.

But he said it would be better if they knew specifics.

If he was seeing things or if he thought Killua was a hallucination for another reason, why he was obsessed with painting, what had happened to his hands, etcetera.

Just trying to understand what the damage was so they could better fix it.

It was late into the night by the time Killua came back inside.

Gon’s bedroom light was still on.

Killua took a deep breath.

Two quick turns of two different brass knobs and he was staring the object of his worst nightmares and fondest obsessions.

The object looked back, brown eyes meeting his.

They seemed… agonized to do so.

Killua licked his lips.

He wasn’t sure how this was going to go.


	26. Chapter 26

“Do… you see other things?”

Killua’s question seemed.. Wobbly and uncertain.

He was taking a first nervous step into an area far from his comfort zone.

Gon could see that much.

This… lie was very easy to believe.

He… looked so much and… acted so much like…

The truth.

Perhaps… it wasn’t so bad to play along.

For a little.

It’s not like he can do anything productive.

“Well… sort of. Sometimes.” Gon answered, equally wobbly.

Sharing his thoughts, long ago and a nightmare away, had been his forte but now…

It felt strange.

His instincts were miles ahead of his tongue, and it took a carefully clenched fist keep the distant, tugging force from snapping its leash in half.

But Gon managed it.

He started small.

“I have… dreams. Nightmares.” He swallowed.

”And sometimes, right after I wake up, it gets tough to… figure out what’s… what _feels_ right.”


	27. Chapter 27

Killua swallowed, unable to control his expression.

Gon’s eyes were vacant, they seemed… hollow.

It seemed like the words were more coming out of Gon than being created by him.

He’d seen Gon’s eyes like this before, and the memory contorted his stomach into a pained, twisting mess.

Even worse than the look was the words.

The same thoughts had spilled over Killua’s lips a long time ago.

The same thought that had poured into the ears of the only family Killua was beginning to hate.


	28. Killua's memory

It was two in morning.

Or something roughly close.

One of the butlers was in his room, trying to take Killua to some kind of training.

Killua impaled him through the bone in his left shoulder with a three pronged candlestick.

Killua screamed “Die!” Over and over and over.

Two minutes and a snapped neck later, Killua was still punching the corpse.

He’d stopped screaming.

Only because he physically could not anymore.

Instead he was just hoarsely whispering over and over.

“Please. Please. Please…”

Nightmare and reality had blurred in the late night, creating something horrible.

Something Killua wanted to kill, something he wanted to taste the blood of and see the weakness in.

Something that was mostly a lie.

“Kil.” Came the cool, drawing tones.

That voice had the eyes of Killua’s nightmare monster.

“What are you doing?” Drawled the eyes.

Killua scuttled away from the from the mound of stain and bone he’d created.

Those cold, fish-like eyes followed him.

“I- The nightmare. It… Followed me. I woke up and it was still there and-” Killua stuttered and stumbled over his words.

Those cold, voiced eyes followed him.

“I know what you mean.” They said.

Killua was back up against the wall.

“I know that fear.” Illumi said, closing the distance so that their noses were practically touching.

Illumi leaned in and kissed Killua, hard and on his lips.

Then withdrew, a thin glimmering trail of spit between them.

“And eventually, it will stop.” Those drawling eyes said, just before they vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uuuuuh  
> this is it  
> this is all I have written.

**Author's Note:**

> I am genuinely sorry you made the choice to read this.  
> If you want to comment, I will absolutely read it at least twice but I might not respond.  
> between nerves and wanting to avoid inflating numbers, unless I know you personally I will probably just cower away from replying to your comments.


End file.
